Monday, April 11, 2011

Offa, King of Mercia and such

So … ummm … I seem to be boring everyone spitless. Okay, okay, so that’s a mixed metaphor or something, but you know what I mean? Right? So … one of you needs to come up with a fun post that will amaze, delight, produce peals of laughter, shocked gasps, raised eyebrows and furrowed brows … and lots of comments.

Whatcha got, boys and girls? Give me your best!

** On to other stuff. Remember that guy who boasted he was in the top 99.9999999 percent in the nation for brain power (and shoe size, I’m sure)? Remember I observed that that included everyone but the bottom .0000001 percent? He’s back, trying to worm his way into our project again. He wrote to my writing partner offering to send documentation. His email was ignored. So off he toddles to AOL mail and gets himself a new email. He sends something we’ve had for about a year and which you can now get off the internet anyway. He is a persistent little devil. Bruce sent him a nice thank you but we have this reply. He did not say, “Hey, dude! I know who you are.” He’s too nice for that … or feisty … or something.

I bought a 18th Century Korean coin off ebay. I paid too much. When held in my hand the coin is not nearly as nice as it appears in the photo. I’ll keep it though. It was all for cheap. The guy didn’t cheat me at all. I should have put the photo in my photo editor and taken a better look.

There’s another coin I’m watching. I can’t verify that it is genuine. The seller doesn’t know what it is. I can identify the king: Offa of Mercia. The portrait appears to be his wife. But it looks like a fantasy piece to me. It’s in the UK, and I’m always reluctant to buy from across the sea. I’ll skip on that. I would bid if I knew this was genuine. I don’t have a good reference work for British coins of that era.

My inner pixie tells me this is genuine. Someone will get a bargain, just not me.

I am not teaching my classes tomorrow. I’m still too sick to do much of anything, and I’m trying to work at my “main job.” I wish I had a bazillion bucks; I’d go cute shoe shopping, coffee sipping, gossip talking, and junk store shoppin’. As it is, I have to run down to the Digital Imaging place and have some photocopies made. Some nice person at a university in Canada donated thirty-five dollars to a research fund for a copy of a booklet published in the 1890’s. I have to get that done today. Facing that minor task is like facing a firing squad. I feel that badly today.

1 comment:

An occasional reader
said...

Of course I don’t know what actual heinous crime the top 99 per cent man has committed (apart from a mix-up with statistics which he will never live down – and no doubt he read THIS blog too), but why not just allow him to contribute? If he asks for a deal you don’t like you can always ignore him or decline politely. You never know, some of these people out there may still have gold sitting in a file somewhere with no idea of its importance until a post on the history blog jogs a memory. Unless the guy has published something obscene or threatening or really blotted his copybook in some way – other than just annoying you - you can take what you want (assuming anything does surface) and ignore everything else. If he is genuinely interested in history he won’t want to impede your project. And if he wanted to impede it, he is surely powerless anyway.